No not necessarily. Need I re-post the web definition for plagairism? The plagairizers needs to be taking credit for quotes or ideas that are not their own. But does the Epic of Gilgamesh or Genesis have an author's name attached to them? Technically they were written anonymously. Technically. Therefore, technically, they cannot be plagairized. Missed that subtle component of the definition to plagairism?
yes, i did. here's the bit you posted:
quote:
Definitions of Plagiarism on the Web:
* the act of appropriating the literary composition of another author, or excerpts, ideas, or passages therefrom, and passing the material off as one's own creation.
ucblibraries.colorado.edu/about/glossary.htm
did the epic of gilgamesh have at least one author? or did nobody write it? where does it say that the author has to be named? will i not get in trouble in school if i turn in the epic of gilgamesh as my own work for a literature class?
that bolded bit is "the documentary hypothesis;" the thing you're arguing against.
That's also the SOESV too. And saying I'm arguing against that, when I just argued for it, is not a logical statement.
i've never understood how someone can reach the right conclusion, but understand it wrongly. no, it is not a logical statement. you are arguing against the documentary hypothesis, but the basis of your argument
accepts the documentary hypothesis. this is the equivalent of arguing against evolution, but using it to explain how noah only had to take certain kinds of animals in his boat.
either genesis is composed of source documents, or it's not. make up your mind.
I've already said my view on this. If you've forgotten it, then go back and read my previous posts again.
yes. your previous posts are arguing against the hypothesis that says that the torah was compiled from source documents. no you are claiming that your doctrine accepts that at least one book of the torah comes from multiple sources. which is it? are there multiple sources, or one source?
Ya I got that. I just felt like I could argue your view better than you did on this point is all.
uh, no, i called you on that usage because you argued YOUR point, not mine.
Well I view Isaiah as prophecy of course, so it would be God doing the mocking. And no, I don't take a strict stance against that being the case. I just don't then assume that Genesis and Isaiah were all written around the same time too. I have no problem with a city or a country being mentioned in different written documents 100's of year apart. I see that as plausible.
yes, that's fine and all. but they're mentioned hundreds of years apart for the same event, or at least one remarkably similar. on it's own, a coincidence. put too many coincidences start to look suspicious.
No, quite frankly I don't. Feel free to present a compelling argument that I must. But I see that coincidences are indeed possible. Why would Genesis not mention things about Babylon separately from the Captivity period and its writings? Why should I make a connection there?
here i was only asking if you acknowledge that the hebrew legend appears to be concerning a real place the babylonians have a remarkably similar legend about. surely you do -- at the very least it's good for the inerrency doctrine...
According to liberal scholars these documents were written at a close time to each other. But I don't have that view. I view the Bible as truthful and accept it's plain meaning at face value. I do not need to develope elaborate conspiracy theories to prop up my arguments. Now do you have some compelling evidence that the Bible cannot be true that I missed somewhere?
where was i arguing that the bible was not true? if anything, i made a pretty good case for one story being based on a REAL event.
i read the bible at face value too. i just come to a different conclusion than you do, because i'm not trying to get it to fit a preconcieved notion. i don't care if the bible is right, or wrong, or when it was written or by whom. i really don't.
but face value says that you read a book called "in the beginning" as being about the past, not the present.
The fact that the words may be a pun doesn't make the story not true.
are you really grasping at straws now? straw-men, anyways? the fact that it's a pun on a derogatory name suggests insult. suggests -- read it however you like.
the point is that it's a story about how a nation who exists at the time of authorship got their name, "in the beginning." do you notice the mention of how they are called that "to this day?" the day it happened and the day it was written are not the same day -- time as passed and the person has fathered a people.
I don't have any problem with this. I've read Genesis many times and I concur with your assessment here. But I don't see that as somehow making it untruthful.
the argument is not that it's untruthful. the argument is that it was written by people who lived after the events described.
Did it ever occur to you that perhaps that Mountain has two names, and Moses knew them both and simply used them interchangeably? What evidence do you have that writing or talking in this manner would have been ilogical or simply bad writing for Moses to do at the time periods in question?
ok, let's look at this analytically. the documentary hypothesis predicts that if we divide up the text into sources based on other criteria, that one source will use "horeb" and another "sinai."
this is confirmed, and by an evangelical source, i might point out:
quote:
"Sinai" can be found in the Yahwist (J) and Priestly (P) documents, while "Horeb" was used in the Elohist (E) and Deuteronomic (D) sources.{1}
Portland Seminary at George Fox University in Oregon
The Pentateuch is a huge book. My NKJV version has it at 190 pages, small print.
my shortest torah is 167 pages. my longest is 1200 (but that includes prayers and halftorot, as well as lots of footnotes). but i want to point something out. 190 pages is not a huge book. "the catcher in the rye" is 214 pages, but the name of the hotel holden stays at doesn't change once. 190 pages is not a lot to expect consistency from.
I'm inclined to believe that a document of that size, written by one person, is going to have plenty words that have the same meaning, places with more than one name, or even people or peoples with more than one name.
well, we DO have someone with two names. how about that. we have abram (abraham) and jacob (israel). know what we also have? stories about how they got their second names.
where is the story about how horeb became sinai, or vice versa? where's and indication that horeb and sinai are even the same place -- refered to as one being the other, not just the same events happening.
Ya I just don't see a problem here. Sorry. I think it's more like you've been taught to view the matter in this way and so you do. Odd how for 1000's of years, people have been studying the Bible and never came to the same conclusion. Perhaps it's simply not as obvious as you imply?
maybe you should look at the conclusions they did come to. some have suggested that horeb is the region, sinai is the mountain. others have suggest two mountains.
Was there a pillar of fire and a cloud once they captured the promised land? Perhaps Moses realized this would cease then? And being different from surrounding nations does not mean they can't have a king.
it does when kings are considered divine.
No I don't think the Bible has disagreements. You haven't presented any so far. Why should I? Inconsistency? I pray everyday. And I call God, Lord, Jesus, God, Father, and even more names than this. Am I being inconsistent? Are my prayers ilogical because of this? The "problem" you're describing, exists in the minds of liberal scholars and no where else. And it's that simple. Saying it's a problem, doesn't make it one.
but you agreed to an argument -- one founded on the basis that the bible is inconsistent. not contradictory, just not fully homogenized.
and yes, you are being inconsistent. did i qualify that as something bad? if you were consistently inconsistent -- using different names one after the other, that would say something different than using one name for three years, a different name for two years, and then switching back.
I understand that the JEDP theory is built on a theory that divides up the authorship of Genesis by the names of God that are used in given passages. So? That's not evidence that any of that is true. The foundational theory is still a theory. Or do you have evidence for this too and I don't know about it?
ah, see, that's the problem. you haven't gotten to step two -- once we divide the sources up, we read them.
they may not read like the stories we know, but the interesting thing is that each source contains complete stories. j has a complete and coherent creation story, as does e. this holds for most stories in the torah, although some separate less cleanly. but the redundancy is pretty good support for separate sources.
Sure. I like it because I'm inclined to believe there is a whole lot of oral tradition in the Bible, as I've pointed out already. Or do I?
you're inclined to believe. i am relating that there is evidence for the written transmission, instead of oral -- it's not a belief. it's got a bit more weight to it.
the evidence for the written transmission is the confirmed prediction of the documentary hypothesis. see that
documentary bit? that means "relating to documents" (not the discovery channel kind, don't play semantics here). it is the documentary hypothesis because it hypothesizes that the bible came from
written documents.
you agree that it did. can we stop arguing now that you agree?
I don't think the views of a 12th century Rabbi are terribly relevant to determining the views of ancient Rabbis. The way I see it, this is an irrelevant point.
then modern interpretation isn't valid either. and neither is long-standing views (which include 12th century rabbis)
Look you put up in a previous post the best information for the JEDP theory from rabbinic tradition you could find and quite frankly there was nothing there. A Rabbi speculating that Moses didn't write a handful of passages in the Pentateuch, is no foundation for the JEDP theory. Those are separate issues, that bear resemblence by pure coincidence.
tell me, forms, is it a coincidence that you're claiming coincidences a lot?
do you not understand the evolution of an idea? one rabbi says "well, moses couldn't have written this part. it had to come from somewhere else." and another points out some more. and another points more disagreements. the beaking point is when disagreements can be lumped together in consistent sets, and coherency can be derived from dividing incoherency (which, btw, is god's prefered method of creation).
but it's the QUESTIONING that matters. and the questioning began 1000 years ago, with small questions. but it's still a line of questions.
Rabbinic writings are huge and they don't always agree with each other, as you point out later here and I'm perfectly well aware of.
and clearly not all written by the same rabbi. wait, no. prove they weren't.
The point is that there is a Rabbinic tradition for Mosaic authorship of the Bible and it is known to not be questioned for some time.
did you miss the part where they were questioning it 1000 years ago? or are the 1000 years before that more important. (keep in mind we've only had the modern jewish text for 1800 years).
More Agreement? OK. Where in the Pentateuch is there DISAGREEMENT? Back up this claim please.
so you're arguing against written sources now? make up your mind.
here's a disagreement: are man and woman created at the same time, or one from the other?
Which proves nothing both because there is no reason why God could only be called one name by the author of Genesis or sources Moses likely based the book on and because dividing Genesis into separate accounts has zero to do with casting doubt on Mosaic authorship of the Bible.
suppose i'm reading a book about william shakespeare. for one whole chapter, he's just called "shakespeare," and nothing else. then for another three chapters, he's called "william shakespeare," and nothing else. but then another chapter it's "shakespere," "shackespeare," and "shakespear." and in another chapter, he's mysteriously called "marlow."
kinda weird, isn't it?
Which means nothing because Moses did not have to write the whole Pentateuch in one style only. What evidence do you have that he could not have written with shifts in styles?
moses as a schizophrenic? it's like having a book of short stories, all of which are told in completely different voices.
i mentioned salinger above -- i have a book of salinger short stories. they all sound the same: the same voice. btw, there are 9 sources there, and the book is roughly the length of your penteteuch.
Parallel accounts can be natural coincidences. I concede that doublets are strong evidence for either different source authors or the same author writing about the same matter at different times. But you would need to give an example where this type of style would be ilogical for Moses to do, in the last four books of the Pentateuch. Otherwise it's a mute issue.
will do. have you read the ten commandments? they're in exodus 20. and also exodus 34 -- and they're different.
The continuity of the various sources;
Not quite sure exactly what's being referred to here.
i explained it above. it's the phenomenon where the separated sources still read like continuous documents.
The political assumptions implicit in the text;
I think you'd need to cite examples to make a relevant point with this one.
see the points on babel and ben-ammi. also that the texts appear to originate in different political and theological contexts.
the stories of the covenant between God and Abraham; the naming of Isaac; the two stories in which Abraham claims to a king that his wife is really his sister; and the two stories of the revelation to Jacob at Bet-El. A famed triplet is the three different versions of how the town of Be'ersheba got its name.
And how are these true doublets. Aren't they actually talking about different things and just happen to have a few similarities?
actually, the article messed up. the abraham and abimelech story happens THREE times, not just two. except the third is with isaac and rebekah. all three are exactly the same story -- they come into town, claim the wife is a sister for fear of death, the wife gets taken by abimelech for a wife. it's almost consumated, but god swings in to the rescue and stops the king, who then returns the wife to her husband, and is really pissed. they leave with goodies so as not to incur the wrath of god.
either it's the SAME story repeated, or they found a good way to rip abimelech off. this time, i suspect there's no ripping off going on -- there is no greedy motivation present, just fear.
I'm inclined to agree that the Genesis compiler used more than one written document about the creation account.
ok, so let me make an assumption. you contend that moses wrote four books of the torah, minus an epilogue by joshua, but compiled genesis from existing documents. right? so moses did not write the entirety of the torah, correct?
can we move on from here?
I think that what happened was either the women in question had both Moabites and Midianites among them or that some Midianites were in Moab. Or it could be both of these.
The JEDP theory, OTOH, supposes that there must have been atleast two authors who wrote this passage. But I don't see a logical split anywhere in the passage for such a possibility. Also, even if one author added to the story, it is very surprising that he would not have noticed that the passage begins by calling the women "Moabites." Seems unlikely he would have been so sloppy in lying to me.
i am slightly unfamiliar with this story. it's been a while since i read numbers (the census half bores the tears out of me).
but the contention is not that one source is lying -- but that two separate sources with disagreements were editted together. neither was TRYING to be inconsistent with the other, or untruthful, they just did not HAVE the other source and were reporting the story they knew or had.
quote:
The Ten Commandments appear in Exodus 20, but in a slightly different wording in Deuteronomy 5. A second, almost completely different set of Ten Commandments appears in Exodus 34.
This makes alot of sense if Moses was just speaking matter of factly. But if there were multiple authors, it seems ilogical to me that they would not simply copy the wording of the earlier passages. So I don't see any problems with this
again, you are misunderstanding what the contention is. it's not EARLIER passages, but separate works. one work had one set, the other a different set. they were editted together at a later point. that's the documentary hypothesis -- the editting together or separate source documents.
as a single author, this presents problems. why would moses write down one set of commandments, break the stones, and then write down the exact words of the first ones -- only to have them come out completely different? surely moses himself would have noticed, when it happened.
So maybe Sinai had more than one name? Maybe Jethro had more than one name too, like Israel and Jeshurun? Maybe Moses married a 2nd wife, who happened to be Cushite? Or maybe Zipporah was half Midianite and half Cushite, but Miriam and Aaron didn't view Cushites as being equal to Midianites, who also would have been descendents of Abraham? Perhaps Moses was referring to Zipporah as Cushite, since that was what they objected to and called her a Midianite earlier, because Jethro, her father, was Midianite?
ad hoc, all of it. the fact that the documentary hypothesis explains and predicts the inconsistencies, but you have to come up with rationalizations to justify them looks really bad.
But I don't see anything that would make me believe that one person didn't write the whole Pentateuch. I mean come on, we could take a number of large writings and divide it up based on similar superficial divisions and then claim, see multiple authors wrote it.
ok, let's do it. pick your favourite book. (you also ignored that that table pointed out very many philosophical differences -- even god has all of those qualities and i'm sure he does, it's still one source emphasizing different qualities than another)
I disagree. It is a collection of books and we Evangelicals view it this way. Maybe some don't, but that sure as heck isn't what's taught at Bible colleges.
how many volumnes is your bible in? seems like a silly point, sure. but that's what i mean. we've compiled all of these books into one binding. that's part of the process.
Well I don't see it that way. I've come to my own conclusion about the book, based on studying it myself and I don't see the JEDP theory anywhere in the Pentateuch, sticking out at me and compelling me to seriously consider its possibility.
...except in genesis. which you agree is composed of more than one source.
I've read little of it. And none of this changes the fact that Rabbis historically believed that Moses wrote the Pentateuch. I mean what example of early Rabbinic tradition do you have of any Rabbis questioning Mosaic authorship of the vaste majority of the Pentateuch?
i had a bit of discussion with ramoss recently. apparently, the tradition of redaction goes back some time, and the position of the major editor and compiler of the torah is even known -- ezra. not ibn ezra, but ezra the prophet and "scribe of the torah."
tradition also states that he compiled joshua, judges, samuel, and kings -- the non prophet works of the "the prophets."
I don't believe there ever was a Lilith that Adam married before Eve. The Bible says nothing of this. Genesis 1 and 2 are nowhere logically inconsistent. Perhaps the same things are mentioned with different emphasises but they don't ever technically contradict each other.
uh huh. you missed it again.
this is a problem that is old enough to have a traditional explanation -- jewish tradition is that because genesis 1 says man and woman were created together, but genesis 2 says they were created sequentially, that there is another woman. eve is named the mother of all mankind to differentiate her from lilith. who IS mentioned in the bible, in the book of isaiah.
she's in the talmud, too.
I find the argument that they do laughable.
you mean, unles you agree with it? they argument they "do" is that genesis had one author. two authors? no lilith.
It presupposes that the compiler(s) of Genesis were so stupid that they didn't even recognize that they contradicted themselves a mere few paragraphs apart.
STUPID?
retarded.
quote:
Pro 26:4 Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou also be like unto him.
Pro 26:5 Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own conceit.
how did they put two completely opposite verses one right after the other the other in proverbs? did they not recognize that they contradicted themselves?
or, do you think, there was another purpose? or perhaps that it didn't bother them?
I think if they lied and/or used different sources, that were not true, which is still a lying of sorts, that they surely would have seen the contradictions and realized that leaving it as is, would likely not fool people so easily and make their forgery look like one.
who said anything about fooling anyone? or that someone was fooled? who do you think was fooled by the proverbs "contradiction" above? why do you think the motives were to decieve, as opposed to collect and present tradition?
I'm inclined to beleive that liars, in matters as important as this, would be much more likely to try and be more consistent.
but
the redactor is not a liar. he's honestly presenting what he has. were the council of nicea all liars because they couldn't decide what jesus's last words were? no, they just presented the four gospels that were commonly in use.
This doesn't invalidate my claim in any way. It is entirely plausible that Pharoah was called a king over israel but Nebuchadnezzar happened to not have been called this, at least not in the Bible. No reason why that couldn't be the case.
no, i'm making the challenge easier for you. show me a single instance of pharaoh OR nebuchadnezzar OR any other conquering power being called "king to israel" and i'll accept your reading that the verse in question could apply to pharaoh.
but one needs to only search the bible and see that "children of israel" is a pretty common way to refer to the people who live in the country of israel. beny-yisrael = yisraely.
This doesn't detract from the vailidity of my claim in any way.
you claim that they used "children of israel" because it was not a country when the verse was written. i showed you an instance (among MANY btw) where the exact phrase is used while israel IS a country. that makes your point wrong, according to the bible. "children of israel" in no way indicates a lack of country.
Sure they might have, but as Pharoah was the only king to have ever ruled over them until that time, it's hardly problemtic that Moses' original audience would have known what he was referring to.
ok, i'll make the challenge even easier. the reference here was the verb malak. did pharaoh king israel? or did he do something else to israel?
I'm sorry, I just don't see how any of this challenges my claim. I mean so Edomite kings are being contrasted to a Pharoah that ruled over the children of Israel, so what?
one contrast at a time -- the kings of edom are being contrasted to a lack of kings in israel.
for instance, it's saying "johnny got an apple before i got my apple." not "johnny got an apple before i got a black eye." the first is about who got an apple first. the second doesn't really mean a whole lot. apples are better than a black eye, sure, but what does one have to do with the other?
you can't contrast something twice in the same sentance and expect it to make a coherent relation. the statement can be factual, sure, but pointless. (never taken english?)
It is indeed ambiguous, I don't see how you think it can't be. Pharaoh was king over the Israelites and the Egyptians. So? Honestly, I just don't see any real challenge to my claim. I think you need to provide new information on this point or it's a resolved issue. Forgive me if I don't respond to a rebuttal of yours on this point, that has no new information in it.
you're missing it. perhaps it's a lack of hebrew knowledge here. malak-melek l'beny-yisrael. ruled-king to-sons-of-israel. it's not king "over" israel, it's king "to" israel. lamed means "to" like in "i go
to the store" ani holek
l'ha-chanut, or "he likes
to read" hu oheb
l'qroa.
If Chaldeans lived there, sure you would.
was ur in saudi arabia?
Not neccessarily. If Moses simply compiled Genesis, based on earlier sources, it's quite plausible that that was simply the information available to him. Wouldn't surprise me if even Moses didn't know where "Ur of the Chaldeans" actually was.
i'm sure, especially since he never makes mention of the chaldeans anywhere else -- they're just not present.
both samuel and joshua refer to the same book. the both have to be after the authorship of jasher. a good guess would put them close to being contemporary.
I don't see why.
i said "guess." it's a starting point. logically, they both would have had to have been written after the book of jasher, correct?
have you read the book of jasher?
but joshua citing something else is pretty good evidence that it was written later, by someone else, and not joshua.
How does that logically follow?
according to joshua, the book of jasher contains descriptions of the events in joshua's times. why would joshua, writing shortly after the event itself happened, having witnessed it firsthand, refer us to another book, already written and finished, by someone else?
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